


The void that's left

by legends_saga



Category: Star Wars Legends: New Jedi Order Era - All Media Types
Genre: Book 10: Star By Star
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 08:29:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13971219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legends_saga/pseuds/legends_saga
Summary: "You always think that you have a lot of time left. But someday you're going to have the last conversation you'll ever have with someone you love. You'll realize that you'll never talk to him again, never be with him again... and the only thing that knowledge will leave you with is sorrow."





	The void that's left

Of course, Tahiri wasn't happy to leave Anakin behind - not even for a brief amount of time - but in the end, he was right. She needed to help Tekli and he would find a way. He always did. They'd probably be better and faster together, just like they had been on Yavin Four, but he would make it. Nothing bad could ever happen to the greatest Jedi of his generation. Nothing bad ever happened to heroes anyway.  
Once she placed her worries aside she was busy following Tekli’s instructions - and the Chadra-Fan kept her busy enough not to notice what was going on around them. Yet, Tahiri came to realize that something was wrong, something she couldn't describe, something paradoxical. It creeped over her like a terrible sickness, crawled through her cells and set them on fire, but simultaneously, she felt nothing at all. Just a pain that didn't hurt and still caused the greatest anguish.  
The sound of steps behind her made Tahiri suddenly forget what she was thinking of. She knew he would made it, of course Anakin had made it. She turned around, knowing that she'd just fall right into his arms, saying that she'd never again allow him to do anything like this without her. She wouldn't let anything happen that could possibly separate them.  
But instead of Anakin, her eyes caught his brother Jacen pushing his twin-sister into walking. Tears ran down her cheeks, finding a path down her chin. Jacen himself was blinking hard, appearing as if he'd lost his composure, but he took a deep breath and screamed out something while his sister stared at him, her jaw slightly dropped.  
Tahiri didn't know how many time had elapsed when she finally came to understand what was wrong - the silence. She saw Jacen moving his lips, she knew some instructions had passed them, but she didn't hear it. Didn't hear a thing except of her own heart beating, so loud that she believed the sound would drive her crazy. She wished it would stop, she begged for it, but it didn't. It only got louder - or the world more silent, Tahiri couldn't tell. Maybe the world wasn't even existent anymore. At least, it didn't feel that way. Didn't feel like something at all, not even like nothing - less than that. Less than nothing. And suddenly Tahiri began to panic, because in fact, the world around her was moving. She noticed that Zekk had taken her place, that Jaina had closed to the front. But she... she felt static, liken frozen in carbonite, just terribly aware of everything.  
_Anakin_. She reached out for him through the Force, since in moments like this, he was the only one to know what to do, the only one knowing her well enough to make her feel better.  
Suddenly, a strong pair of hands laid on her shoulder and after she blinked, Tahiri saw blue eyes that made her sigh with relief.  
"Tahiri, you need to run, alright? Go!" The voice was wrong, she realized. The eyes were too. Too dark, too clouded, not as shining as Anakin's. Those belonged to Ganner. Tahiri's chest began to burn and burst from an inner anguish that took her breath away, but also clouded, as if it wasn't there, only a shadow of nothing. She reached out again, looked for Anakin's spirit the one she knew better than her own. She needed him to calm her, to help her regain control of herself, because if she couldn't do it, she'd be a danger for herself and the rest of the team.  
"Run!" Tahiri was still desperately looking for Anakin when Ganner grabbed her softly but determining and dragged her to the others.  
_Anakin_. She repeated, but her words, carried by the Force, were torn away by it and remained unanswered somewhere in the emptiness within her. His presence wasn't out there anymore, she couldn't sense it. No faint glow of him, not even a hint. Nothing other than her, Ganner and the rest of the Jedi. Everyone but Anakin.  
Tahiri stumbled, slowly understanding what her missing sense of him in the Force meant. What it meant that they were running in the opposite direction.  
This was wrong.  
It couldn’t be.  
The universe had made a mistake.  
Not Anakin.  
_Never_ Anakin.  
This was a lie.  
The Force was tricking her.  
But deep inside her, she knew it wasn’t. She knew it, because that was what had creeped up on her: The feeling that he was gone. The feeling of emptiness. Not a void-like emptiness, a terrible, dreadful, black hole-like emptiness.  
How could he be gone?  
How, when she was still here?  
When they were kids, before Anakin left the Academy, they had always been together. Always had a strong bond connecting them, so strong that sometimes it was impossible to tell if she felt a certain way, or if he did. On Yavin, after he had begged her to leave without him and she denied, they had a connection so deep that they almost became a single person.  
Anakin was her other half.  
Her better half.  
How could she be alive if he wasn’t?  
Tahiri couldn’t answer to a single question. She was running, unconsciously, while her thoughts ran circles, while her body felt nothing, but her soul was burning. Suddenly, it seemed awkward that she ever believed the Yuuzhan Vong torture was the worst kind of pain she would have to feel. In fact, she’d rather endure months of what they did to her then than to live another second in this present.  
_But you’ll be there forever. No one will come to rescue you this time. No one will believe in you this time. Cause Anakin’s gone._    
Normally, Tahiri knew, normally pain would cause her to start weeping and crying, but she didn’t even shed a tear. There weren’t enough tears – in fact, Tahiri doubted that the universe offered enough water - for her to cry out.  
After a while, she shut herself completely down from the Force. She hadn’t been really aware that she could do, and she hadn’t been aware of doing it either – it was more of a protective mechanism of her body. It helped little, since despite not feeling it anymore, she still knew that either way, the secure warmth Anakin exuded was extinguished, leaving her freezing cold inside. Worst were the memories, the images flashing in front of her whenever she blinked: His lopsided smile, the fire and kindness in his eyes… A human can survive with his legs cut off, Tahiri thought, but how can anyone survive his heart being ripped out of his chest? The only answer she had was that she wasn’t alive, at least not mentally. She died the same moment Anakin had left the universe. But she still died, again and again with each second passing, with each blink, with each image.  
_“No. For this one, you have to come back.” He blinked, then smiled just as always._  
_“Soon, then.”_  
_“Soon.”, she repeated._  
Soon. Hadn’t that been a promise? Hadn’t he promised her, with those words, that he’d come back for her? Anakin would never break his promise, even if it meant to put himself in greatest danger. It wasn’t in his nature to disappoint anyone, though she knew he always feared to.  
Tentatively, Tahiri opened to the Force again – only to be crushed under another wave of pain. His absence was like a scream, not in the fact that it had left a void in the Force, which would have been at least a little soothing, but in the way that nothing was missing in it. As if Anakin never blazed in it the way he did. In that moment, she found herself glad not to have eaten whatever Alema had made for them. She would only have thrown up.  
The images rushing by suddenly changed into something more terrible than memories. They became glimpses of the present. Tahiri saw glimpses of Anakin’s lifeless body in the hands of the Vong. She didn’t want – she couldn’t endure – thinking of that. Thinking of what they might do to him. What they might have done to him already, even before he died. She started asking herself how hard it was. How painful it was. How lonely it was. The anguish almost physically suffocated her, and she sobbed in an attempt to catch a breath. She felt the others looking at her for a brief second, then lowering their gaze again. Except Jaina, who instead turned for Jacen.  
“You left him to the Yuuzhan Vong.”  
“We had to. They were all over him. You saw that.” That made other scenes appear in Tahiri’s mind, scenes even worse than what she already imagined.  
“He put you in charge, and you left him behind.”  
_No_ , Tahiri thought, _I left him behind_. She had been the one to break her promise. She had promised him that they’d stand together, until the very last. But she had left him. She had betrayed him. And not just that – she also denied him their last kiss, a sign of their love for each other, to take with him in the most terrible moments of his life.  
“Jacen does not deserve your blame.”, Tenel Ka said, and Tahiri agreed. Jacen didn’t deserve it, she did. He would be alive if she would have been there with him. Or they would at least be both gone, with the knowledge of having each other on their side. “Everyone heard the command, and we all know why he gave it. To disregard such an order would have been to dishonor Anakin’s memory and dismiss his sacrifice.”  
Anakin’s sacrifice. The words rang hollow in Tahiri’s head.  
Anakin sacrificed himself. He did it to save them. He had stayed behind for the rest of the team to escape. He gave his life to save his friends, his siblings, he gave his life to allow everyone to survive. To allow her to survive. Tahiri just didn’t know what for. What to live for, when everything she really cared for was gone, somewhere she couldn’t go, somewhere she couldn’t even see it.  
One of the first lessons young Jedi learn is that eternity only exists with the Force. That nothing other than the Force is eternal. But Tahiri knew that this wasn’t really true: Her pain might not be eternal – it would end the day her life ends – but her life, a life without Anakin, would _feel_ like an eternity.


End file.
